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Awesome read Rob. You provided some very good tips on how to promote yourself or business without sounding like a desperate entrepreneur who’s just trying to get a back-link trying to increase their link juice. Today, social media pretty much runs the web. Everybody and anybody you know will either have a LinkedIn account, Facebook account, or Twitter account. And if they haven’t , they will have one eventually.As a recap, here’s the list of 7 tips you provided for better outreach:

Flattery is easier on Twitter

Finding email addresses can be tough

Use Twitter’s search to find opportunities

Tailor your Guest Posting ideas

Twitter Lists FTW

Get an introduction

Show your credibility

Set up custom RSS feeds for key bloggers

The good thing about Social Media is when you try to increase your outreach with somebody new, you won’t sound as much of a creep since it’s all online and informal. Kind of like the quote you mentioned by Michael Gray aka @graywolf, “when u ask someone out on a date do u ask for sex right away? when u ask for a guest post do u ask for a dofollow link?”I thought this was a good example of how you should approach people online. As informal as it is, there’s still an unwritten rule of how you should approach people to increase your outreach. I thought the information you provided was good but it seemed like it was heavy on the Twitter side. How would one go about reaching people via Facebook? I would think it’s pretty much similar but FaceBook allows for more functionality. It’ll be interesting to see what the science for “Facebook Outreach”All in all, great read Rob!

Great article John. I’m sure this is a topic that a lot of people including myself have pondered. Even though Social Media Marketing for search engine algorithms is still it in its infancy, it’s important to keep track of the progress now while it evolves. Social Media has grown and is continuing to grow exponentially that search engines are forced to adapt. It’s the “Social Media Takeover”

The case studies you provided are simple tests but they provide valid evidence for your argument. It makes me wonder if there are more advanced test to help prove your theory. And I’m not trying to knock on your experiments at all.

The biggest takeaway I got from your article is, “tweets, and possibly other social media signals, are becoming increasingly important for the search engines”. There’s no way search engines can avoid how powerful social media is today and how much it aid search engine optimization. Your three takeaways support this.

Three Takeaways

Always post the link on Twitter when you publish a new article. This is common sense for SEOs, but we should also recommend this to clients.

If possible, have 2-3 or more people who will always tweet your links. Since my findings show that the number of tweets may positively affect rankings, the more tweets you have guaranteed, the better chance your article will have of ranking, even for only a short period of time.

To bump an established link up in rankings, it seems necessary that the tweet come from a well-respected, influential, and relevant Twitter account. Of course, when the tweet comes from a respected account, it will often be retweeted numerous times (126 at last count, according to Topsy) and clicked many times (over 9,800 at last check).

The information you’ve provided almost seems obvious but it definitely helps to formally conduct case studies and provide evidence.

Great article randfish. It’s good to learn more about the “Social Media Expert” market and how important it is to business. I’ve always wondered what the job trend was for a social media expert because social media is continuing to play a big role in increasing the ROI of businesses. As this trend continues to grow, there are still a lot of companies and people who have the same assumptions as Peter Shankman. And I must admit myself that I didn’t see how important it was to hire a social media expert to increase the ROI of your business or website.

It makes me wonder what other blogs, business, websites are hiring social media experts. A few sites I can think of that may have hired Social Media Experts are Mashable, Gizmodo, and Engadget. If anyone knows for sure what sites or companies hired social media experts, please share.

When the time comes to hire a social media expert, how do you know he is qualified and how much should you invest in a social media expert? I’m sure there are a lot of frauds out there. But I guess this is just like hiring someone to remodel your house or any other gig. You’ll want to see their work, read any testimonials or feedback about their work, and it would help to meet them through a trusted source.

I’m all for social media and using it to increase brand awareness and in the end increase Return on Investment. Search Engine Optimization and Social Media work hand-in-hand so it’s important to be knowledgeable about both and incorporate both into your website or business.

This was a great and simple article Randfish. Sometimes as designers and developers, we forget that simple things like this can provide us with a lot of help. And when we need answers catered to our audience, why don’t we just ask them?

Sometimes we think there’s a certain technique or tricks to find out information but more often than not, the information is right in front of you and all you have to do is ask or dig for it.

I’m a student at Seattle Central Community College and currently taking an SEO class so I’m fairly new to the game. However, I’ve been keeping up with the SEOmoz.com blog and always seem to find useful information.

The three steps you mention in the article are simple and basic, and they get you the information you need, from the audience you cater to.

Step 1: Build a Survey

The questions here pinpoint the keywords and content a site needs.

Step 2: Send it to Your Customers and/or Potential Customers

Here you will get direct feedback from your audience. With many different social media outlets, friends, friends of friends, etc, the possibilities are endless.

Step 3: Record Responses and Leverage them to Build What the People Want

Data is recorded and strategically applied to increase the SEO and content of your website.

Anyways, this post is very informative and it’s a simple tool we overlook. I will definitely be using this tool/tip in some of my future website projects.

Great article randfish. I like how you provided actual data to back your findings. A lot of writers need to follow this premise to strengthen their arguments whether they’re right or wrong.

I’ve always wondered about the impact of Twitter and Google on SEO rankings. As with most people, I’ve assumed that Twitter has had more impact than Facebook. But it could have been due to my favoritism of Twitter over Facebook. So it’s a little surprising to find out that there’s a remarkable positive correlation between Facebook shares and higher rankings and a dramatic drop for Twitter potentially signaling that its influence as direct signal may not be as strong. But again, the data provided is correlation, not causal.

What I found interesting is that Facebook Shares might be more valuable than Likes especially considering that Likes seem to be more popular among users. Over time if this proves true, I’m interested in seeing what Facebook will change/modify/update to make it easier or emphasize the user of Shares over Likes. All in all, I’m interesting in learning more about the impact of Facebook shares on SEO

The most important thing learned is that social metrics are well correlated with higher rankings. For website owners who want to drive more traffic to their site, it’s better to earn Tweets and Facebook shares than trying not to. Why not if it helps drive traffic to your site?

Very interesting read about SEO. It starts off a little confusing but you make some valid points about the white hat way. I like the video and quote from Matt Cutts, who all SEO enthusiasts should follow,

“Great content has to be the foundation of any good site, because mediocre content tends not to attract exceptional links by itself. And if you’re trying to get exceptional links on really really crappy content, you’re going to be pushing uphill.” “You want to have a well-rounded site, and one of the best ways to do that is to have fantastic, interesting, useful content, great resources, great information, and then that naturally attracts the links. And then search engines want to reflect the fact that the web thinks that you are interesting or important or helpful.”

Many spammers are taking advantage and exploiting SEO. In doing so, they are making quite a bit of money in an unethical way. For now it’s quick money and eventually the Google’s algorithms will be able to stop these spammers from making money, hopefully.

One point you made that I want to emphasize is regarding the 2011 spin on quality content. Search engines want to provide sites that people valuable not sites that have spam all over it. If you plan on starting a company that cares about it’s brand, white hat is the way to go. The content must be quality made for people and not take advantage of search engines.

In doing so, you will not only provide the service you need for your customers, but also an ethical example for any online business building their brand.

Great article Rand. It is well written and you provided solid evidence to agree and disagree with Kris.

What I really appreciate about your article is that it enforces the “Do The Right Thing” philosophy in SEO and inspires me to “Do The Right Thing” as well. I’m a current Web Design/Web Development student at Seattle Central Community College and I appreciate hearing that the right way of doing things is the better route. Yes being a black hat can bring in some money but like you said it’s not sustainable and it’s not as much as you think.

My friend who does SEO work at Microsoft would tell me about all these black hats making money online, how easy it is, and how many accounts they have to penalize or shutdown because they’re doing it the “black hat way”. So it’s good to know that going the white hat route is the way to go.

One question I’d like to raise is, will there ever be a point in time where black hats will be extinct? Probably not. That’s just like asking will hackers ever be extinct? But the good thing about this is that they will make white hats more creative. In way, white hats need black hats and vice versa. I like the part of your article that talks about how Bob Rains joined the white hat forces. It’s good to see people get converted from the dark side just like hackers are needed for Information Security.

Awesome read @jennita. The way I use Twitter is to keep up with friends, see what they’re doing, what they eat with all the Twitpics, keep up to date with news, sports, sneakers, and more so now it’s more of like my RSS feed. Eventually I’d like to be more resourceful to increase my following once I have more time away from work and school to Tweet.

I agree with you and there isn’t one specific way to use Twitter. I think this is one of the reasons why Twitter is who they are today. When I first signed up, I felt a sense of freedom to say pretty much anything to what’s on my mind, latest scores on NBA hoops, how I felt about certain players, what I eat, pics of what I ate, etc. But what set it apart from Facebook to me is that you’re limited to only 140 characters so you have to be creative. Now if somebody were to tell you how to Tweet, what happened to the freedom?

On the flip side this doesn’t mean Tweeting everything on your mind is the proper way to retain followers. It’s one thing to get followers but keeping them is just as important if not more. Just as you mentioned engaging with followers, being conscious of what you Tweet, and finding the right times to tweet are big factors in keeping followers.

I think ROI – Return On In-action, or what you call engaging is big for a company or even celebrities. It already feels cool enough when a company or celebrity accepts your Twitter friend request but when they actually Tweet you back or engage, it makes you feel closer to them and increases their branding relationship with the audience.

It’s good to look at both the personal side and business side of Twitter because in the end, most of us probably don’t want to be the ones with the least amount of followers. It’s crazy to have witnessed how much Twitter has grown since its inception.